Tag: Digital Public Library of America

The Digital Library of Georgia is pleased to announce the availability of the Southern School News now in the Civil Rights Digital Library and soon the Digital Public Library of America.

The Southern School News Archive provides online access to the complete run of the newspaper, published from 1954 until 1965. The monthly paper was the product of the Southern Education Reporting Service, a Ford Foundation-backed group of Southern newspaper editors who sought to report on issues in desegregation in schools of all sizes and levels — from the smallest rural schoolhouses to large state universities — across the American South. The aim of this project was clear and solid: report the events impartially, dispassionately, and as completely as possible.

The newspaper outlined its mission in each issue:

Southern School News is the official publication of the Southern Education Reporting Service, an objective, fact-finding agency established by southern newspaper editors and educators with the aim of providing accurate, unbiased information to school administrators, public officials and interested lay citizens on developments in education arising from the U.S. Supreme Court opinion of May 17, 1954 declaring segregation in the schools unconstitutional. SERS is not an advocate, is neither pro-segregation nor anti-segregation, but simply reports the facts as it finds them, state by state.

The Southern School News Archive is available through the Civil Rights Digital Library, a rich digital resource that serves as a portal providing a seamless virtual library on the Civil Rights Movement drawing on holdings from more than 75 libraries and allied organizations from across the nation.

Southern School News, October 1963. Featured stories include the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, and debate surrounding President Kennedy’s civil rights bill (later to be signed into law as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by President Johnson).

As a service hub for the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), the Digital Library of Georgia (DLG) provides digitization and metadata assistance for its partner institutions around the state. The DLG also aggregates and shares metadata about digital items with the DPLA, allowing the DPLA to act as a portal to these collections. Thanks to grants from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Arcadia Fund, the Digital Library of Georgia has digitized and described these items for inclusion in both the DLG and the DPLA.

And what can you expect to find initially at the DPLA? John Palfrey, President of the DPLA Board of Directors, describes the launch:

“On April 18, we will launch the first beta version of the DPLA. In its first iteration, the DPLA will combine a group of rich, interesting digital collections, from state and regional digital archives to the special collections of major university libraries and federal holdings. The DPLA will demonstrate how powerful and exciting it can be to bring together our nation’s digitized materials, metadata (including catalog records, for instance), code, and digital tools and services into an open, shared resource. Imagine the ability to access a vastly larger set of materials than ever before, both through a single web portal and through your local library, which has carefully curated a subset of the national database.”

Several collections from Georgia institutions are a part of this launch, with more to be added over time. These include the Gay Bolling Shepperson photographs from the Atlanta History Center; the Ships for Victory collection from the Brunswick-Glynn County Library (hosted by the DLG); and the earliest known plantation baseball film, from the Walter J. Brown Media Archives at the University of Georgia.

The Digital Library of Georgia is proud to be a member of this endeavor. We will keep you updated as the Digital Public Library of America grows.